


Converting the Unbelievers

by ashkatom



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-04
Updated: 2012-07-04
Packaged: 2017-11-09 04:05:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/451057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashkatom/pseuds/ashkatom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a slow process, trusting this upstart with Signless' teachings. He's not Signless, and he never will be.</p>
<p>Maybe that's a good thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Converting the Unbelievers

He’s full of prickles, your cavalreaper. He reminds you of Pollux and Karcin, all rolled up into one, flying around and trying to protect everything, brooding when he can’t. You hate him for it. He can’t live up to either one of them, and he’s spending all this time in the shadow of the Sufferer’s last sermon.

You suspect he hates you for similar reasons. You’re careful with your book, one of two last objects that remain of Kar. You always remember his laugh when you triple-wrapped it in waterproofed cloth and carried it in your arms. You remember him paging through it, writing corrections in blocky text. Sometimes you think you can still feel the ghosts of his hands on a page, and more than once you’ve hidden yourself up a tree where Summoner can’t fit (horns or wings, take your pick) and just stared at Kar’s handwriting.

Today you buried it in a locked, airtight box, because there is no way you’d risk your last memories of him on what you’re doing today. You’ve done this before when you’ve had to, and each time, it still feels like wrenching part of yourself away.

“Are you done? We have to get going,” Summoner says, a lance draped over his shoulder and wildlife at his feet. You itch to take a swipe at a cawbeast perched on the tip of his lance, but he always gets angry when you hunt one of his animals, and there are more important things to do today.

You sweep some leaf litter over the burial site of your book and mark several trees with innocuous symbols that only you remember now. If he’s late to meet his seatroll he’ll be fit to burst, but you couldn’t care less. The only revolution that you cared about has been and gone.

\--

Nowhere is far away when you have a dragon to ride, and Pyralspite is more friend to you by now than Redglare ever was, though you miss the legislacerator as a source of information. She was the one who informed you of the fates of Dolorosa and Psi, though she certainly could have worked on her way of breaking bad news. Summoner had to poke you out of a tree with his lance. 

Sometimes you don’t think you ever left there, curled up near the trunk, bark rough against your hands and face as you tried to process their slavery and failed miserably. Your mind still goes blank sometimes, and you start shaking others. As much as you hate him for it, Summoner’s the one that keeps you together. He goads you into working again, prods you into continuing Kar’s work- and what does he know about Kar? 

He’s too arrogant. When he first found you, he recognised you straight off and began firing plans for revolution at you. _Sufferer, uh, he had lots of good ideas, but he wasn’t so good with the results, and I intend to deliver them..._

He still has the scars from when he blithely said that to your face. If nothing else, you have to keep him humble. You know better than anyone that revolution is doomed to failure.

\--

An entire squad of cavalreapers waits for you on the shore of the seadweller’s territory. Pyralspite almost squashes two of them when she lands. You slide off her and pat her on the nose while Summoner does his leaderly duties. The water is barely stirring tonight, not that you particularly want to experience it for yourself.

The sand is cold between your toes. You scrunch into it, then, something inside you set alight, start running as fast as you can. Summoner shouts after you, but the wind whips through your hair and drowns out everything that you don’t care to hear. Kar and Pollux would have _loved_ this, they never got to go to a beach, Rosa was always too worried-

The fire freeing you dies abruptly and you stop. You’re a long way down the shore from everyone else, although Summoner is on his way towards you. You can’t start crying in front of his squad of revolutionaries – gog, they’re all older than you but you feel like they’re kids – but you can lie down and look at the stars. Pollux is out there somewhere, though who knows if he’s still aware enough to be called Pollux. Kar’s ashes in the wind, Rosa’s- well, you haven’t heard any news of Rosa in a long time, and you’re slowly going crazy and trying to outrun reality.

It catches up to you in the form of a winged troll as suicidal as you are. “Are you done-”

“Running off fur no reason?” You stand up and stretch. “Purrhaps. I’m not one of your purrfect soldiers. Don’t purrsume to give me clawders.”

“This is a really delicate negotiation, and if we convince Paraph-”

You cut him off with a sharp gesture. “You already gave me the spiel.”

He shoves his lance into the sand. “Then maybe, just maybe, you could stick with the plan? This is, only, the culmination of all my efforts so far!”

“You’re doing all the right things fur all the wrong reasons,” you tell him, “but I won’t mess up your opurration.” You make quotation marks with your fingers at operation, just to show him how seriously you are taking this. There’s not a chance that this seadweller is serious about joining, but if there’s even a chance you can find out what happened to Rosa, or when Pollux’s ship is due back...

You’ve lived long enough without your revolutionaries. 

\--

It is, of course, an ambush. Six seadwellers, all with weapons that gleam deadly in the starlight, rush the squad of cavalreapers, and purple isn’t the only colour staining the sand afterwards. You gutted one yourself, taunted him that you’d rename him Fillet on his burial mound, that fish are made for cats to hunt.

Your left arm tingles in a way that means it’s lost too much blood. You bind up the large gash Fillet managed to give you and resolve to stitch it once you get back to your cave. Hopefully Pyralspite doesn’t feel playful for the flight back to your makeshift hive.

Summoner sits in the sand beside you once he’s ordered his troops about to dispose of the bodies and cover their trails. He takes the cloth you were winding around your arm with a muttered, “You’re doing that wrong,” and ties it himself. It’s tighter than it needs to be.

“You said I was doing things wrong. Before,” he says, eventually. 

“Don’t worry about it,” you say. “You’re not the only one.” You close your eyes and stifle a yawn. “Ka- Sufferer never hurt a troll in his life. He was furry, furry good at strifing, but he couldn’t hurt anyone. It wasn’t in him.”

“Well, yes, we’ve been through this, and it’s not exactly, _your_ revolution now, is it? I mean, my way, we’re getting results, I know Condesce is running scared, all the proclamations she puts out, the hunts for rebels, we’re getting-”

You hold your claws at his throat. “You’re doing the right things fur the wrong reasons.”

He swallows. One of his hands digs into the sand, and he’s going to try throwing it in your eyes, you can tell. You cut him off before he can, taking away your claws to dig your fingers into his shoulders. You drag him closer, ignore your wounds, and fight to feel alive.

\--

You dig up your book with one arm. When you open the box and peel away the wrappings, it’s in pristine condition as always, which means it’s exactly as battered and dog-eared and all the same pages are falling out as ever. Summoner sits on Pyralspite and watches, only interrupting once you’ve finished carefully leafing through the pages.

“Can I borrow that?”

You look up at him in panicked shock, hugging your book to your chest with your bad arm, your good one out in a defensive position. He doesn’t move from his perch atop Pyralspite, and after a few long moments, you relax. Marginally. “No.”

He tilts his head, almost hitting Pyralspite with one massive horn. The dragon nudges him with a shoulder and he strokes a hand along her neck before returning his attention to you. “Could I, read it then? In your presence. You keep saying I need to be more like him.”

“If you can escape your chains for a while,” you sneer, and jerk your head. “Leave.”

He salutes to you, not an ounce of mockery in the gesture, then Pyralspite takes to the skies. You walk back to your cave, stitch up your wounds, make some tea, and only then brush a hand over the cover of the book, opening to your favourite passage.

“Looks like you’re still confurting the unbelievers, Kar,” you say softly. “I hope you’re happy.”


End file.
